Self-Discipline - Focus Your Focus

Happiness Is Right in Front of You

The ability to manage your focus is one of your greatest powers. What you put your attention on determines what you accomplish, how you feel, and what you can handle in life. You might even say that it has the biggest influence over what happens to you in life. Here’s the perfect example . . .


When I gripped the wheels on my wheelchair that summer afternoon in 2002, I thought I was headed for a brief roll through the park for some fresh air and mild exercise. As it turned out, I was actually setting out on one of the most life - altering days I’ve ever experienced.

I travel quite a bit for my speaking career, spending literally hundreds of hours crammed in confined spaces with people who are often cranky, tired, and angry at the world.

I cherish my time at home, and love taking leisurely rolls in the park behind my house. Usually a family member, friend, or love interest joins me on these jaunts, pushing my wheelchair or walking alongside me as we share conversation.

This day, for some reason, I decided to go it alone.

As I wheeled down my driveway and rounded the bend toward the park, I saw a house I’d never seen before.

It looked as if it had just been built, and it was gorgeous — probably three times the size of mine.

To make it even more perfect, the house was overflowing with life. The family dog was running up and down the length of the front yard, and a young brother and sister were giggling as they played fetch with the pup. In the large kitchen window, I could see their mother and father preparing dinner. It was as though a Norman Rockwell painting had come to life on my street. Everything seemed in perfect harmony for them, yet this lovely scene sent my mood plummeting. I went from enjoying the day to feeling empty inside, and I was gripped by one consuming thought: “ I’ll be happy when
I get to live in a house that large. ”

Why didn’t I have what my neighbors had? I wanted a bigger home! If I had a bigger home, then my neighbors would see that I had become something, I had made something of my life. Yet I was still living in the home I grew up in as a child. To the outside world, I must look like a failure. As I continued down the path into the park, I felt overwhelmingly discouraged.

Suddenly, I was jolted into the present by the purring engine noise that unmistakably announces my favorite piece of machinery — a Porsche. I looked up and down the road just to catch a glimpse of it. There it was, shining red in the late afternoon light. My heart raced. What would it be like to step on the gas pedal, forced back into my leather bucket seat by the speed of acceleration?

Just the thought of owning such a car brought me soaring — though temporary — elation. I imagined what it would be like to roll up to my friends’houses and honk the horn. The looks on their faces when they saw me in a bright red Porsche would be worth as much as the car.

Then the driver sped off, taking my feelings of happiness along with the car. I hated the boring vehicle sitting in the driveway of my everyday boring house. I wanted more.

I couldn’t be happy until I had it.

I wheeled on. By this time, the sun was setting. I had almost reached the other side of the park when I experienced a third glaring reminder of how much my life was lacking. A young woman close to my age came jogging directly toward me on the path. As she drew closer, my heart stopped. She was beautiful. Her body was flawless.

Everything about her moved with grace and ease as she rapidly neared me. This girl was what I call “ amnesia hot ” — so hot I couldn’t even remember my own name in her presence. Our eyes met briefly. We shared a split second together. The smell of her soft perfume filled my nose as she ran past. I was in heaven.

I thought, “ I’ll be so happy when I’m dating a girl like that. ” Then my train of thought derailed, crashing into a series of discouraging questions that repeated in an endless loop.

“ Why don’t you have a girlfriend like that, Sean? ”

“ Why aren’t you married yet? ”

“ How come you haven’t been able to afford that Porsche?

“ Why don’t you live in that big, new house? ”

The more I tried to avoid these negative thoughts, the faster my mind raced down this dark path. When I’d set out an hour or so ago, I was feeling pretty good. Now I couldn’t believe how discontented I felt with my life.

By this time, I’d reached the end of the park, and the sky was growing as dark as my mind. At that moment, an inner light bulb went on. I had completely missed the point of my roll through the park.

The reason I’d gone to the park in the first place was to unwind, be with nature, and get some exercise. Instead, I’d turned into a tense ball of despair, focusing all my energy on what was lacking in my life. I was so busy focusing on all the things I didn’t have that I overlooked everything I did have. I took a deep breath, looked around, and started over.

It was a glorious day. Or at least it had been when I’d started. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. The flowers were in full bloom — yellows and reds and oranges and purples — and I had wheeled right past them, obsessed with my lack of stuff. But was I really lacking so much?

Even though I might not have had the largest home in the neighborhood, at least I lived in a safe neighborhood.

I might not have had the fastest or newest car, but it worked just fine at hauling me around from place to place. As for the hot girlfriend, I was simply being impatient. When the right girl comes along it will be meant to be. Unfortunately,
I had focused so hard on everything that I didn’t have, I had forgotten about the greatest thing I did have: my life. I was right here, right now.

Suddenly, I flashed back to the day I spoke to a university class, and noticed an empty chair in the front row.

Later, the professor told me sadly that the young woman who should have been sitting there had died that morning in a freak accident at her dorm. I was shocked. She wasn’t much younger than I was.

The time we are given here is fleeting. We think it’s going to last forever, but it’s not. We just never know when it’s going to be our turn to go. I couldn’t believe I’d wasted these precious life moments focusing on what I thought I was lacking!

With my focus readjusted from negative to positive, I sat at the end of the path in the park and looked back. Now I could smell the scent of flowers in the air, and the green leaves on the shady trees filled my eyes. Some dogs were barking in the neighborhood, and I could hear the laughter of kids running home for dinner. I began to focus on all we ever really have: the present. It really is a gift, a gift of time.

How Focus Works

Our conscious mind can focus on only about seven chunks of data per second. After that, it loses focus. For example, when you’re trying to drive, and you’re also drinking coffee, reading a map, listening to the radio, talking on your cell phone, and checking yourself out in the rearview mirror,


you can easily forget about the most important thing you’re doing — driving — and you run the risk of crashing several tons of metal into a cement barrier or nearby tree. Even if you’re not in a car, however, it’s never a good idea to spread your focus too thin.

Think of your focus as the area that a small flashlight can illuminate in a dark room. There may be tons of things in the room, but you can see only what that beam of light is shining on. The same holds true with mental focus. There are an infinite number of things to pay attention to, yet our focus limits us to a relative few. And these few are of prime importance. As my close friend and mentor Zan Perrion has told me many times, “ Whatever you focus on, your life will head in that direction. ”

His wisdom applies to every aspect of life. I’ve learned this firsthand from observing my clients. The happiest ones focus on all the great things in life, and the most miserable ones focus on all the things that are going wrong. In fact,
I believe I have found a foolproof recipe for misery: focus on all the things you don’t like and don’t have in life, and don’t think about anything else. It’s that simple.

The Egg - Timer Technique

My parents never formally studied a word of psychology, yet they instinctively knew that if I focused too long on a negative aspect of my life, I would only make it worse. They also knew they couldn’t deny me the experiences of sadness, anger, and self - pity, because I would merely repress the feelings and express them in some destructive way later. So they came up with an ingenious solution.

If they caught me feeling sorry for myself, they would say, “ Sean, if you want to feel sorry for yourself, that’s totally okay. ” They would then go to the kitchen, rustle around in the pantry, and return with an egg timer and this instruction: “ However, Sean, today you only get fifteen minutes. Ready? Go! ” And the egg timer would click off the minutes.

Of course, after five minutes of wallowing in uninterrupted self - pity, I would get bored and want to go play.

They would then remind me that I had another ten minutes to go. This tactic allowed me to immerse myself in self - pity for a prescribed period of time instead of dragging it out over the course of days, weeks, or a lifetime. This taught me to focus like a laser and then move on.

Mom and Dad made the constraints of self - pity very clear: “ Sean, ” they told me, “ you can certainly cry if you want to. You’re just not allowed to drown in your tears. ”

Eventually, this trained my brain to see pity as useless and ineffective. As I grew older, my moments of self - pity grew less and less common.

I remember a conversation my dad and I had during one of my fifteen - minute pity parties when I was about nine or ten. I was mad because all my buddies were able to play basketball, while I had to sit on the sidelines and could only watch. I was focusing on what I couldn’t do, which of course felt horrible. Here’s how my father handled it.

“ Sean, ” he said, “ focus on what you can do and what you do have in your life. You may not be able to play in the NBA, but if you spend your energy getting wealthy, someday you can own an NBA team! ”

All these years later, I’ve never forgotten that conversation.

It was an “ Aha! ” moment that taught me the importance of controlling my focus. My mom and dad had hundreds of talks with me when I was a kid about the power of focusing on what I had instead of what I didn’t have. Years later, I realized they were really teaching me the power of gratitude. Gratitude is simply focused appreciation.

It is nearly impossible to be upset in a space of gratitude.

Compare Leads to Despair

In the park that day, I was miserable because I was focusing on what I lacked instead of what I had. I just kept thinking that everyone else had so much more. Comparing ourselves to others is a game that ends badly no matter which way you play it. If you act as if you’re worse off than others, you will believe it, and you will live your life feeling inferior. If you act as if you’re superior to others, you’ll believe that too — and you’ll live a life of arrogance; no one will want to be around you. This little mantra says it all: “ Compare leads to despair. ”

Anytime I catch myself feeling sad because I don’t have something someone else does, I repeat my mantra, and the gnawing feeling of lacking something quickly subsides.

This happens because I’m deliberately shifting my fo